Top-Shelf Dread

Barry Rubin says three things need to happen to end the fighting in Gaza. Here’s the third one:

Ideally, the world would help overthrow the illegal Hamas regime that represses people in the Gaza Strip and repeatedly drags them into costly and losing wars with their stronger neighbor. But that’s not going to happen. So the next best thing is a ceasefire that will last several years at least. While Hamas still has ties with Iran, and some factions are closer to Tehran, the Gaza regime’s real patron is Egypt. Both places are ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It always seems to come back to either the Muslim Brotherhood or Tehran, doesn’t it? The West used to have the courage to deal with odious regimes out to destroy it. Now we’re too busy self-destructing to drum up that courage.

We did, however, somehow find it in us to convince our friends to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi for us, even though he’d been quietly helping our efforts to kill bad guys, and to throw our (admittedly distasteful) ally Hosni Mubarak under the bus. We get rid of the old autocrats in favor of the new jihadis, then blast Israel for defending itself.

If I didn’t have to take the boys to school this morning, I might already be shaking up a martini or two.